CRASH the EA House!

Just posted on tso-e.com/blog by Luc
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Phone Booth Packing!
Posted in Uncategorized by Luc on the January 28th, 2008
Yesterday, During the bake off event, By upping the payouts, Maxis gave a lot of money to pizza makers and Preserve makers. More than 1,500,000 Simoleans! I hope that was fun!

Today we will do something a little less costly to Maxis (I just can’t afford to do this everyday!). Hopefully it will be even more fun!

I do not know how many Sims we can have in a house. I am thinking that we should let the roommates decide how many Sims they want to let in. I understand that when you have a lot and you want to keep your visitors green, too many sims is a bad thing. But some of you might want to use a higher limit. But what should we use? 30,50,100? 200?

Today I will remove the limit in the EA community lot, and I would like to try to pack that house between 1:00pm and 2m PST ( this should allow our European friends to join).

Let’s see what happens as the house fills up with Sims. We can try to go until it crashes! (most likely) or we run out of Sims (most likely).

If we increase the number of Sims, it would make sense to enable more floors in the lots. How many floors do you think is the maximum number of floors we should have?

Just posted on tso-e.com/blog by Luc
<blockquote>
Phone Booth Packing!
Posted in Uncategorized by Luc on the January 28th, 2008
Yesterday, During the bake off event, By upping the payouts, Maxis gave a lot of money to pizza makers and Preserve makers. More than 1,500,000 Simoleans! I hope that was fun!

Today we will do something a little less costly to Maxis (I just can’t afford to do this everyday!). Hopefully it will be even more fun!

I do not know how many Sims we can have in a house. I am thinking that we should let the roommates decide how many Sims they want to let in. I understand that when you have a lot and you want to keep your visitors green, too many sims is a bad thing. But some of you might want to use a higher limit. But what should we use? 30,50,100? 200?

Today I will remove the limit in the EA community lot, and I would like to try to pack that house between 1:00pm and 2m PST ( this should allow our European friends to join).

Let’s see what happens as the house fills up with Sims. We can try to go until it crashes! (most likely) or we run out of Sims (most likely).

If we increase the number of Sims, it would make sense to enable more floors in the lots. How many floors do you think is the maximum number of floors we should have?

Just posted on tso-e.com/blog by Luc
<blockquote>
Phone Booth Packing!
Posted in Uncategorized by Luc on the January 28th, 2008
Yesterday, During the bake off event, By upping the payouts, Maxis gave a lot of money to pizza makers and Preserve makers. More than 1,500,000 Simoleans! I hope that was fun!

Today we will do something a little less costly to Maxis (I just can’t afford to do this everyday!). Hopefully it will be even more fun!

I do not know how many Sims we can have in a house. I am thinking that we should let the roommates decide how many Sims they want to let in. I understand that when you have a lot and you want to keep your visitors green, too many sims is a bad thing. But some of you might want to use a higher limit. But what should we use? 30,50,100? 200?

Today I will remove the limit in the EA community lot, and I would like to try to pack that house between 1:00pm and 2m PST ( this should allow our European friends to join).

Let’s see what happens as the house fills up with Sims. We can try to go until it crashes! (most likely) or we run out of Sims (most likely).

If we increase the number of Sims, it would make sense to enable more floors in the lots. How many floors do you think is the maximum number of floors we should have?

Thank you,

Luc

</blockquote>

This will be fun! Now is your chance to crash EA!

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That sounds like something I might enjoy doing!

If I were 8 years old.

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We really need to work on getting you in touch with your inner child Donavan

There are still a lot of players on DIAL-UP. Yes, its antiquated, however its all some of us have *rural*. We're happy that we can even play the game, however we have a lot of problems with lagging and end up getting E23. I tried four different store lots yesterday and errored out all four times. The return of the catalogue would be greatly appreciated! With 30 sims on a lot we experience lag for a minute or more sometimes and I honestly don't see how we'll manage getting around a lot with more sims on it! I like the idea of enabling house owners to set the limit of guests, but with the limitations on where you can make money now, if most lots are set at 50 or even more, I don't think we'll be able to hang in there and be able to move around. We're hoping the DX9 will help instead of make things worse for dial-up users.

Sounds fun! I'm sure i'm going to be lagging miserably within minutes though. Oh well.
I think increasing the number of floors to 4 or 5 would be plenty. Lots of people seem happy enough just using the bottom floor and having some roof art, anyway. I think any more than 4 or 5 floors and it would get a little annoying trying to keep track of what's where in the house, and getting around and stuff, and with that number, it would open up a massive enough range of new building possibilities to keep probably everyone happy.

I hope this means that the property object limit will be dramtically increased too? Doubled? Tripled? Quadrupled, please please? I'd much rather have more objects in my house than more sims, lol. Lots of us can't handle more than 30 or so sims before we start lagging badly anyway.

Object limtis are directly tied into how many sims a lot will support. Sims on a lot take up tile space just as if you had an object there. Sims add more lag to lot in many cases because they are more animated than most objects in game. If you filled your lot with 200 flashing dance cages and flashing lights, I'm sure you could achieve the same lag effects. Of course you want to add those animated objects after you already filled your house with other objects using up space.

During the first beta test limits were set on the number of tiles and objects we could safely use in a house with the amount of sims allowed to enter.

Have you ever noticed the tremendous lag affect caused by NPCs or pets arriving on a lot that is already full of objects and sims?

We saw the counter go as high as 120, but really only about 70 sims made it in. The sims attempting to come in created quite a bit of lag, but if the limit had been at 70, I am not sure there would have been much. So sometime next week we will try to set the limit at 60 for an hour and see how it goes.

We saw the counter go as high as 120, but really only about 70 sims made it in. The sims attempting to come in created quite a bit of lag, but if the limit had been at 70, I am not sure there would have been much. So sometime next week we will try to set the limit at 60 for an hour and see how it goes.

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And the reason this is not being tested in TC3 is........ ???

We saw the counter go as high as 120, but really only about 70 sims made it in. The sims attempting to come in created quite a bit of lag, but if the limit had been at 70, I am not sure there would have been much. So sometime next week we will try to set the limit at 60 for an hour and see how it goes.

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And the reason this is not being tested in TC3 is........ ???

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TC3 (like all testing servers) have a very low population. For example, right this very second, there are 82 players there &amp; 524 in EA-Land.

So you see, even if we wanted to, we couldn't perform a population test there!

We saw the counter go as high as 120, but really only about 70 sims made it in. The sims attempting to come in created quite a bit of lag, but if the limit had been at 70, I am not sure there would have been much. So sometime next week we will try to set the limit at 60 for an hour and see how it goes.

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And the reason this is not being tested in TC3 is........ ???

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TC3 (like all testing servers) have a very low population. For example, right this very second, there are 82 players there &amp; 524 in EA-Land.

So you see, even if we wanted to, we couldn't perform a population test there!

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Well, perhaps if you had posted that this was to take place in TC3 - ppl would have logged on there in order to participate.
Maybe even some of those who cannot currently get into EA Land, but *can* get into TC3.
Further - this brings up the question (yet again) of paying to test.
The argument was made (rightly) that TC3 was a test platform, and not *actually* a part of the paid game experience. But now, EA Land is open. This is it - The big apple, the enchilada, the whole nine yards. The production cities are dead and just waiting to be consumed. *This* is what we are paying for.
This test (and I'm glad you admitted it was a test, rather than some benevolent gift) belongs where all testing belongs - in the test city.
And please don't tell me having "beta" appended to the end of the name makes it a defacto test platform - unless you intend to wipe EA Land (beta) and start over at some point with a fresh build.

I agree. In the past, when there was something new to try we would receive an in messege asking us to go to test to see how servers hold out etc. (example when the spot lites came into play) The messege was sent out a number of times for a few days to make sure enough players went to TEST to TEST what ever they were TESTING. If there is no reason for a TC3 why not just move our sims to EA Land instead of having another Ghost Town? (since this seems to be the new kid on the block and being used as a testing spot)

I believe some type of post, like the silly ones that come up about absolutely nothing, should have came up when logging on about Crash the EA House in Test Center at a certain day and time. I did not appreciate the lag it caused and having crashed 5 or 6 times during that time.

That is why I have a sim in TC3, for testing. I spend time in EA Land for socializing, not participating or being hassled by testing.

Considering that only 120 out of the 500+ people on the server at the time even bothered to participate in the EALand test, how many do you think would have actually patched to TC3 for the test?

And yes, there was an in-game message during the test to invite everyone to go to Town Hall.

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Who knows - there are lots of ppl who can't get into EA Land, but *can* get into TC3 - maybe there would have been more? Point is - we don't know because it wasn't even attempted.

First there was Test Center - needed in order to test new stuff. Then there was the argument justifying TC3 as a necessary supplement in order to test stuff for EA Land. Now that EA Land is open, TC3 (which now incorporates TC) is ignored and we take testing straight to the *new* production city.
Something is wrong with this picture.

First there was Test Center - needed in order to test new stuff. Then there was the argument justifying TC3 as a necessary supplement in order to test stuff for EA Land. Now that EA Land is open, TC3 (which now incorporates TC) is ignored and we take testing straight to the *new* production city.
Something is wrong with this picture.

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Yip I totally agree with Donavan here, this for me should have been tested in TC3 before it was brought into the new city........Otherwise what is the use in having TC3 and us spending all the time and energy playing there and its not used?

Considering that only 120 out of the 500+ people on the server at the time even bothered to participate in the EALand test, how many do you think would have actually patched to TC3 for the test?

And yes, there was an in-game message during the test to invite everyone to go to Town Hall.

[/ QUOTE ]very true..I read before it started when and where...I wasn't logged in at the time it took place though I could of had I felt it worth it..If i had been playing I certainly wouldn't have patched to TC3 for it...this was not a new release, simply a little on the fly test

First there was Test Center - needed in order to test new stuff. Then there was the argument justifying TC3 as a necessary supplement in order to test stuff for EA Land. Now that EA Land is open, TC3 (which now incorporates TC) is ignored and we take testing straight to the *new* production city.
Something is wrong with this picture.

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Yip I totally agree with Donavan here, this for me should have been tested in TC3 before it was brought into the new city........Otherwise what is the use in having TC3 and us spending all the time and energy playing there and its not used?

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I agree it would have been better if they tested it in TC3, but considering nobody was there, and that EA land isn't a production city yet.. it's in BETA, i think it's understandable. I wish they would just announce these things earlier, so we could all know about it with plenty of time, and test them in TC3.

Considering that only 120 out of the 500+ people on the server at the time even bothered to participate in the EALand test, how many do you think would have actually patched to TC3 for the test?

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I think the 120 was only a count of sims on or trying to land on the property, not a count of unique sims. If sims were coming and going during that time, the count of unique sims would be higher than 120.
Did anyone leave during the event?

Considering that only 120 out of the 500+ people on the server at the time even bothered to participate in the EALand test, how many do you think would have actually patched to TC3 for the test?

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I think the 120 was only a count of sims on or trying to land on the property, not a count of unique sims. If sims were coming and going during that time, the count of unique sims would be higher than 120.
Did anyone leave during the event?

Unfortunately, due to the timing of this event (I'm in Texas, which is in the Central Time Zone), I will be unable to attend.

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Oddly enough, I will be able to attend and I am also in the Central time zone and even Texas!

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Yep, CST here (West TN) and that would have been 3-4pm CST, so that would be perfect for everybody except those who work days. 3rd shift workers and those who do not work outside the home would have loved it

There are still a lot of players on DIAL-UP. Yes, its antiquated, however its all some of us have *rural*. We're happy that we can even play the game, however we have a lot of problems with lagging and end up getting E23. I tried four different store lots yesterday and errored out all four times. The return of the catalogue would be greatly appreciated! With 30 sims on a lot we experience lag for a minute or more sometimes and I honestly don't see how we'll manage getting around a lot with more sims on it! I like the idea of enabling house owners to set the limit of guests, but with the limitations on where you can make money now, if most lots are set at 50 or even more, I don't think we'll be able to hang in there and be able to move around. We're hoping the DX9 will help instead of make things worse for dial-up users.

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The good news is that even in the rural areas DSL is starting to become available. I moved to a rural area in West TN in Feb 05, and was forced to use dialup for the first 17 months but it finally reached us out here when the merger between Bellsouth and AT&amp;T happened. So, all is not lost....technology is slowly reaching even the rural areas, though I don't understand why it's taking quite as long as it is.

Considering that only 120 out of the 500+ people on the server at the time even bothered to participate in the EALand test, how many do you think would have actually patched to TC3 for the test?

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I think the 120 was only a count of sims on or trying to land on the property, not a count of unique sims. If sims were coming and going during that time, the count of unique sims would be higher than 120.
Did anyone leave during the event?

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Huh?

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Here's a simple example:

5 sims enter a lot. The counter reads 5. They leave and 5 different sims enter the lot. Again, the counter reads 5.

Considering that only 120 out of the 500+ people on the server at the time even bothered to participate in the EALand test, how many do you think would have actually patched to TC3 for the test?

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I think the 120 was only a count of sims on or trying to land on the property, not a count of unique sims. If sims were coming and going during that time, the count of unique sims would be higher than 120.
Did anyone leave during the event?

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Huh?

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Here's a simple example:

5 sims enter a lot. The counter reads 5. They leave and 5 different sims enter the lot. Again, the counter reads 5.

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